Quote Originally Posted by 120mm View Post
Agreed. It would take a revolutionary approach to acquisition, though, as once you add on requirements and specs, your cheap, effective COIN aircraft becomes an expensive, duplicated effort incredibly quickly, because the current acquisition system is built to do exactly that.

I smell a research project, there....
because not only the acquisition process (Heh -- little humor there...) but the big manufacturers (as I originally said ) are attuned to obsolescence creation.

We ended WW II with three sizes of tracks and roadwheels and five power packs that had over 50% parts commonality throughout the range for all tracked vehicles. Rationalization to cut costs and increase efficiency and effectiveness. More to the point, the Navy ended up designing small classes of aircraft and ships to explore various approaches wherein rationalization and commonality were emphasized in an effort to get ideal and easily mass produced, durable and effective fighting equipment with no gold plating (think F8F) built in the future. Try that today and the Lobbyists would have a field day buying Congroids. BAE systems does not want to pay a license fee to GD for a track nor does Bath like paying one to Northrop Grumman...

Same thing applies with aircraft; gotta be proprietary in all things to minimize the competitors (and suppliers) profit.

I'm afraid we're stuck where we are...